Such grouping devices are used primarily in production installations for mass producing individually packaged goods. During the transport between the processing machines, the goods are in a more or less closed product stream. Depending on the capacity and the structure of the processing machine, the stream must be subdivided into partial groups of different size. Such a subdivision is required in the food industry, particularly in the beverage industry, among other sectors. In the food industry, the product stream of beverage containers, such as, for example, bottles or cans, is grouped by a packaging machine to produce ready-for-sale packing units.
In the state of the art, different grouping devices for several more or less closed product streams exist already. Thus, for example, the German Patent DE 3144449 A1 shows a grouping device, whose crossbars, which present divider fingers, engage from below in the closed product stream, to create gaps in it, as a result of the different speeds of the conveyor belt and the crossbars, and thus they divide the stream into groups. The crossbars here run in a closed circulation path, which is in a plane that is vertical to the transport plane. The drawback of this invention is that it does not allow a rapid resetting of the size of the grouping units. If such a grouping is to be carried out, the machine must be stopped, and mechanical settings and adjustments have to be made.
The German Patent DE 4036341 A1 relates to a grouping device for separating container groups from a container stream. The grouping elements, which are attached to a perpetually circulating drive element, are provided with abutment and retention surfaces. Although the grouping elements can be adjusted in such a manner that they can be adapted to different container diameters, this device does not allow the arbitrary determination of the number of containers in a grouped unit.
The German Patent DE 3029508 C2 discloses a device for grouping work pieces in which spokes, to which the dividers are attached, are attached to a common shaft. As a result of the up and down movement of the shaft, and the associated change in the separation between the shaft and the transport plane, the length of the collection to be separated can be set. However, resetting the length of the rows of individually packaged goods to be separated is rather complicated, because one needs to change not only the separation between the shaft and the transport plane, but also the length of the circulation guides. In practice, it is therefore difficult to achieve a flexible design of the collection lengths within a time of a few rotations.